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Not going to start a fight here, cuz it's clear this guy is an A-1 nut-bunny, but I did notice one small little script in the text that should give a very faint glimmer of hope...

"staunch advocate of states rights"

Yeah, that bit. As in, things like gay rights and abortion should be left handled on a STATE level. At least, that's the way I understand the Constitution. Perhaps that can be the one little argument to 'derail' any attempts by him to push his opinion on such matters.

He's not appointed to the bench yet. He's only gone through Republican-controlled judiciary committee before being approved by the Senate. The Democrats will likely filibuster him and force the Republicans to take him off the mandate.

yeah, i read about his ideas, and had they not opened the article with "far-right" i still wouldn't like this guy. i don't need any pre-attached labels to know i don't want this guy on the federal bench.

Most people I know live in MD; or at least many people I know. Mikulski and Sarbanes are pretty much clearly going to vote against him. But for those on my friends list who share my views on Pryor, I wanted to let them know, particularly if in a GOP state, hey, maybe write a letter. :)

"The American experiment is not a theocracy and does not establish an official religion, but the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States are rooted in a Christian perspective of the nature of government and the nature of man. The challenge of the next millennium will be to preserve the American experiment by restoring its Christian perspective."

That one's from Pryor in 1997. Took some doing to find a decent quote that's not out of context.

Here's the rub with Pryor: He has an at least tolerable record of, on many issues, keeping his personal and political views seperate from his job. He has not always been successful, and he is a fairly strident activist for the positions he holds, which is his right as a citizen, though it raises the valid questionof whether he can maintain the kind of distance from issues that a judge should demonstrate.

Now: He's certainly backpedaled a bit from some of his earlier positions. He defended the presence of the 10 commandments in a US courthouse, but now seems to emphasize his opposition to that. His active opposition to a number of equal opportunity cases is well documented - he argued against admissionof women into VMI, and there is evidence that his investigations into election fraud as AG were disproprotionaly skewed towards black districts, but drawing conclusions based off that is spurious (though that has not stopped some groups from doing so). His position of Federalism is well known. He's attracted some contoversy over abortion: On one hand, his personal position is so strident and displays such disdain fro the supreme court as to be somewhat shocking. On the other hand, he has resisted abortion laws he felt were unconstitutional.

There's lots more: a guy like Pryor doesn't get this far without doing a lot, and by the very nature of his position, much of it is going to be controversial, but that's a good sampling. Naturally, there are complexities to these past positions. The question of which issues he has genuinely changed his position on and which ones he's just putting spin onis one that deserves serious consideration. At the end of the day this set of complex issues form a composite image that committe members need to look at and consider if any of these issues render him an inappropriate choice for the position.

Of course, what a bizarre coincidence that the detailed analysis of these issues resulted in a vote precisely along party lines, with even republicans who won't support him on the floor voting for him being passed thought. Almost as if that's the same vote we'd have if there had been a trained monkey put in front of the committe.

Just coincidence though. Definately not politics. Still, we don't want people _thinking_ it's politics, they might read somethign into that meaningless coincidence. We need to find some other exscuse....a bias or bigotry or something. That might work.